Too bad no one explained the minister that we'd like to not enable vote buying (nor other forms of boter coercion).

(The official guidelines make a distinction between allowed - no info visible - and illegal stemfies, but no one's doing any enforcement.)

I think the problem is more that the trend over the last 5-7 decades has been to privatise things. The EU (for instance) has rules forcing (e.g.,) privatisation of train companies and postal services. This has caused previously government-owned services to be privatised.

In this day and age, I'd be surprised to hear of any successful case where a non-public good was made public in a Western country. (I'll restrict my surprise to there because of insufficient familiarity with other countries to make such sweeping statements.) Whether it'd be web browsers, water treatment facilities, energy-related, healthcare-related, infrastructure-related, etc.: if it's currently privatised, it will emphatically not revert to public; if it's currently public, it might be forced to be privatised.

You might think about "privatised-but-with-strings-attached" variants, like in California with "carrier-of-last-resort", or in EU with public transport concessions requiring also services that operate at a loss to service small population centers / unpopular hours. Typically, these impose restrictions on the market parties on what they must deliver in order to be granted the concession. That seems like a way to guarantee the kind of service a government would deliver, but by market parties. And it is! But once you encode rules, you can start eroding them. Every new concession tender going out, you can try to dilute such conditions. A bit is enough - every step gained can be relied upon in future negotiations ("you're asking for more than last term"). And, of course, every small step can be argued by increasing costs - because cost will always increase anyway.

The TL;DRR (didn't read the rant): the public commons has a tendency to erode in favour of privatisation. There is pressure to do so, and no real counterpressure to reverse, only to not go too fast.

This is why I don't think that being introvert is caused by fear, nor that courage cause extraverted behaviour. For most people, whether a social situation is providing or draining energy very often depends on more than just you.

Yes, there are exceptions. But don't underestimate yourself -- in either direction. The vast majority of people need both to thrive.

China, N. Korea, probably Vietnam, India'll listen to them, possibly more in s.e. Asia, and they're expanding their influence in Africa (by supplying mercenary armies).

They play the game differently than the US (at the very least: with other countries), but that does not make them a 2nd rate power.

Arguing that he hasn't personally killed anyone is not a strong rebuke against such allegations.

> Is it not enough that one state committed a crime and he reported it?

It depends on what "it" would be enough for... but if he indeed actively surpressed damaging info leaked to him on par with the stuff he has released, yeah, that makes matters complex.

Another criticism I've seen is that the leaks did not do any redaction whatsoever - even when it clearly pertained to informants in war zones. For that, if the allegations are true, my view is simple: you shouldn't do that. And if you set up an infrastructure for leaking, it is reasonable to assume that you're capable of handling such an important and obviously necessary step.

So "isn't it enough?" - no, it is more complicated than that.

Not sure how to square that with this statement on Wikipedia's page on box plots:

Box plots are non-parametric: they display variation in samples of a statistical population without making any assumptions of the underlying statistical distribution[3]

Absolutely. A subset of the people in the audience are tenured or tenure-track academics. These folks get grants for postdocs. Moreover, they may be on a hiring committee. Even better: if you leave a favorable impression and a colleague of theirs has a job opening, they might recommend you.

Treat (academic) presentations as job talks. Good impressions open doors, not just in the immediate future but also further out than that.

Space is vast; matter is (relatively) sparse. Moreover, matter tends to clump together, concentrating what little there is.

Well, those arguments flip the narrative. No one has to justify their privacy; invasion of privacy needs to be justified - and, when warranted, scope needs to be enforced.

In case anyone needs an analogue: when paying, you don't give the seller access to all of your money. They justify a particular amount and if you agree, they get the right to only that.

With money, we tend to call folks who take more than warranted "robbers" or "thieves". I think society would be in a better state of we viewed invasion of privacy as negatively.

Two ways to fix that (in general): improve one side, or worsen the other. Some measures do both simultaneously, eg. bus lanes take away asphalt for cars and improve bus infrastructure.

It's fairly easy to make a bus network more convenient than a car in a city. You can easily take measures such as dedicated bus lanes, one way streets, pedestrian areas, narrower streets + wider pavements and cycle lanes, less and more expensive parking.

The current attractiveness of public transport is roughly how attractive cars should have been. But most US cities have focused for decades on making car use more attractive. Congratulations, it worked.

Example: tap water quality (assuming you live where tap water is safe to drink). Do you know how it works? What steps are being taken? Could you fix that yourself for your house if things break down? And yet, you probably care.

Another example: car safety features. Could you add a crumple zone to an 80s car? A cage construction? Yet you probably care that any car you're in has those properly engineered and no part of your body will be crumpled in case of a collision.

To just timeshift from daylight to evening/night/morning, you'd need batteries in the 25-35kWh range, 40-50kWh if airco on in the night, another 80kWh if you're driving electric and typically away from home during the day, charge at night. That is a lot of energy to pack, even at the low end. Imagine if everyone finds the cheapest set on AliExpress and DIYs it themselves, and then looks for a new model once current installation no longer matches their needs (capacity loss or use increase)... this must be a fire brigade worst nightmare.

Due to generation being more localised, we also need some form of much more local redistribution and/or storage. But not the nightmare that is one or more poorly installed and poorly maintained batteries of dubious origin per house.

But if it does look very much like her, it doesn't really matter whether you never intended to.

Suppose someone asked Dall-e for an image of Black Widow like in the first Avengers movie, promoting their brand. If they then use that in advertising, Johansson's portrait rights would likely be violated. Even (especially) if they never contacted her about doing the ad herself.

This is similar to that, but with voice, not portrait.

To coin a Dutch phrase: I cannot make chocolate out of that. Anyone here have an idea how to bring these two points together? Other than the obvious "wrt. EU inhabitants, SO is lying", that is. Or is it really that simple?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten - under "European Union"